I26	DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE
and characteristic in modern French political life.1
Fortunately, perhaps, there is also a very different element in
the national vision of France, to which we must now turn.
French homage to the classical ideals of ordered unity and
rational harmony takes many forms: the power of the Academie
frangaise over the French language; the belief, which persisted
through every regime since 1789, in a positive set of ideas to be
inculcated by the national system of education; the national
prestige accorded to distinguished scientists and artists; the
instinctive rejection of racial prejudices and theories; the
colonial policy of assimilation and the generous extension of
citizenship. It was simply assumed that the cultural unity of
French civilization is such that it must be formally expressed in
national institutions and policies. Only belatedly and reluct-
antly was it admitted that this unity could admit of other loyal-
ties and individual rights within the nation: and the rights of a
free Press, free Labour organization and free public meeting
date from the very end of the nineteenth century. In this curi-
ous way—again so reminiscent of Rousseau—French indi-
vidualism has been tempered and restricted by a totalitarian
nationalism and etatisme, and the Renaissance antithesis of
sovereign individual and sovereign State has persisted in
sharper terms than in England. Even when France has been
most anxious to make men free, she has been tempted, the next
moment, to believe that they can be forced to be free. This
rapid transition, so foreign to British habits of thought, re-
mains an important factor in the schemes for a more 'social
democracy3 in France since her liberation in 1944. The ill-fated
Algiers scheme for a unified national news-agency—une agence
unique—is but one instance.2
Religion and ecclesiastical traditions have reinforced these
1 Gf. Jean Guehenno: Jeunesse de la France (1936); Charles Peguy.
.Notre Jeunesse (1916) and other works; D. Halevy: Ptguy et les Cahiers
de la Quinzaine (1941).
2 Freedom of the Press in France really came only in 1881; free
association in trade unions in 1884; free public meeting in 1907. For
the draft schemes of Algiers for the agence unique see France, published
in London, 3 August 1944, and other issues of that period.